


Rage

by dandeliononfire



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: But I thought it was an interesting premise., But you're left not knowing., F/M, I would bleed from my soul if I were forced to write this fic as a longer version., I've been asked before., It could be a great branch off into a different third book plot instead of Mockingjay, It was meant to be that., It will never become a multi-chapter so no don't ask., It's a gut-punch short., No one actually dies., THIS WILL HURT.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandeliononfire/pseuds/dandeliononfire
Summary: A one-scene, emotional gut-punch look into how Katniss would react to losing Peeta without having been able to enjoy what she had. It's a very short drabble looking at what would happen if Snow decided to seize Katniss and Peeta and order their execution following the riots and rebellion being stirred up by their Victory Tour.  It will hurt. No one dies, but they are under impending execution. Theoretically, however, and in my head-canon for my own ficlet, they don't ultimately die, in case that helps you.





	Rage

____

I lean over and kiss him. It is too brief.

When I pull back, his blue eyes are wide and flecked with confusion. And a little sad. A little sad.

My head drops with shame, and my cheeks burn with it. I’m ashamed I let him believe a lie for so long. Shamed that I let Snow, and maybe even my sense of guilt about Gale’s feelings, manipulate me into keeping secret the one truth I should have shared with my most important ally.

I feel shame, yes. And something else. Despair. Because even now I have no words to tell him that only a portion of it had been for the Games. Such a smaller portion even than I’d allowed myself to believe at the time. No, I can’t be trusted to explain. My thoughts are too jumbled and frantic and broken to strand together. He was always the one good with words, never me.

So as we sit here, both knowing we’re about to be executed for a treason we had no part in, I let my shoulders and body melt into a slouch rather than confess that I’ve kept back a truth I know he’s been desperate for.

Acting as though I loved him, for Snow’s watching eyes, to protect our lives and the lives of our families, has in the end turned out less damaging to me than my pretending  _to him_  that I didn’t.

The irony of it makes me laugh bitterly. I watch as a tear drops onto my hands.

If he’d really been watching, he would have to have known that a few of the first kisses in that cave were for show, for the sponsors and the gamemakers, but none of them after  _that one_. The one when he’d finally come through the fever and was himself and I was back from my own loss of blood.

 _If he’d just paid attention he’d have seen it!_  The laughing at his attempts to make me laugh. The hurt I’d felt when I’d thought he’d been trying to kill me. The reckless way I risked my life for his medicine. The terror when I thought the cannon had fired for him and not Foxface. How I gripped him so tight after the games that it ripped his shirt when the medics pulled him away from me. Of course, he’d been flat-lining, and I’d never told him about that.

Or about the way I almost fell when he let go of my hand once we were back home.

Or the way my heart caught in my throat every time I had to pretend to be at ease kissing him or being held by him on the victory tour. The way I always stare at him and find myself dumb.

But that cave, that arena, even that tour, were so long ago now. A rebellion has come, and been quelled, and now we’re about to pay the price for being its unintentional symbols.

Our bodies reaped for the Games. The Capitol didn’t ask our permission.

Our story reaped for propaganda. The rebellion leaders never asked our permission.

His hands rest over my mine, which are a brightly splotched red and white from how tightly I have them clenched together.

He tries to push his fingers between mine, but my hands leap and swallow his instantly, greedy in how they smother them.

“Was that real,” he asks with a sort of sad resignation since there is no hope left for either of us. At best we have hours. But with the way the odds have been against us, it could be only minutes.

Beautiful, lovely Peeta, untangling into minimal words the complicated knot I could never untie.

Before I can think, I am beyond my own space and into his, my mouth assaulting his mouth. My tongue confesses everything in a language so intense that I don’t even save energy to breathe.

Eventually, we are forced to pull apart just to suck in air. With a fearlessness and relief I’ve never been able to afford, I climb onto his lap and tie my legs around him before we kiss again. His arms grip around me so tight I think he might be breaking my ribs, but I don’t care. Because while that last kiss had been for all the missed ones, into this one we frantically cram every year we will never have together. A toasting. Children. Arguments over nothing important and making up again. And growing old.

The only part of that future we will ever have together is the dying.

I register that a door has opened behind me right before several sets of strong hands attempt to yank us apart. We both struggle. The breath and flying spit of our desperate shouts mingle in the air between us as our fingers tear into the other’s clothing.

But our strength is no match for the number of Peacekeepers wedging us apart. I kick and flail as they drag me backwards towards the door.

But Peeta.

He goes completely still.

His eyes are glassy, his jaw slack with misery, and I know instantly from his expression he’s determined to spend the last few minutes of his life remembering no other fact in this world except my face.

I feel pain.

A deep, searing pain inside my chest.

Right before my heart explodes behind my ribcage like a bomb and turns me into a wild thing.

Suddenly, my flailing limbs have a power that the strong, bruising hands of the Peacekeepers can barely maintain control over. I screech Peeta’s name so violently that it breaks as I choke on it.

I know my life doesn’t belong to me anymore. That it’s scheduled to end soon. In a matter of minutes, now, at whatever destination these white-shirted bastards are dragging me towards.

But my righteous rage is all I have left to give for Peeta.

It is rooting and growing inside me by the second. It is something unfamiliar. Magnitudes beyond anything I’ve ever felt. It floods me and burns in me so hot that I feel otherworldly. Like I might ascend and transform into some creature greater than myself.

I scream his name again. Then I scream my promise. My vow.

“They will all burn with us!”

**Author's Note:**

> In the head-canon to my own fic here, Katniss ends up breaking away from the Peacekeepers and rescuing Peeta. Just sayin'... Because, well, if it's my fic then my head canon should count for something to make this go down easier.


End file.
